Chapter 7 - Gunfire on the Snowline
The retreat through the Saint Moritz Sanitarium was a nightmare of shattered
glass, flashing red emergency strobes, and deafening gunfire.
Matteo pushed Camilla’s motorized gurney down the rear service corridor, his
body acting as an impenetrable shield between his wife and the gunfire, while
Luca and the two Swiss operatives laid down suppressing fire at every
intersecting hallway.
I ran beside the gurney, clutching the platinum locket in my left hand and the
compact Glock 43 in my right, my knuckles white against the polymer grip.
Behind us, the Black Vanguard mercenaries were advancing with brutal, military
precision, their assault rifles chewing through the drywall, showering us with
plaster dust and sparks from severed electrical conduits.
“To the freight elevator!” Matteo roared over the din of battle.
We rounded the corner to the service bay.
Suddenly, a mercenary in full tactical armor stepped out from the laundry chute
room, leveling a tactical shotgun straight at Camilla’s chest.
Luca was out of ammunition, frantically reloading behind a concrete pillar.
Matteo was on the wrong side of the gurney, his weapon pointed down the main
corridor.
There was no time to think.
The instructions Matteo had given me on the private jet flashed through my mind
like lightning: Point it at anything that wears a Castiglione uniform, and pull
the trigger.
I raised the Glock 43 with both hands.
BANG! BANG!
The recoil kicked hard against my wrists, but the two 9mm rounds struck the
mercenary squarely in the throat, bypassing his tactical body armor.
He gasped, dropping the shotgun, collapsing heavily against the stainless-steel
laundry carts in a spray of dark crimson.
Matteo turned his head, his dark eyes wide with savage, triumphant pride.
“Good girl, Gina!” Matteo shouted, slamming his palm against the freight
elevator call button.
The heavy steel doors opened. We shoved the gurney inside, the doors sliding
shut just as a hail of automatic fire ricocheted off the reinforced steel
exterior with deafening clangs.
The elevator descended into the bedrock beneath the clinic, terminating in an
old subterranean boat slip carved directly out of the granite cliff over Lake
Zurich.
Moored in the freezing water was an enclosed, high-speed tactical interceptor
boat, its twin diesel engines already idling under the care of a trusted Falcone
sailor.
We loaded Camilla into the heated cabin of the boat.
Matteo leaped onto the deck, severing the mooring lines with a single slice of
his tactical knife.
The boat accelerated out of the stone cavern into the open lake, its hull
slicing through the black water at fifty knots, leaving the burning sanitarium
behind in a cloud of snow and diesel smoke.
Inside the heated cabin, Camilla lay on the cushioned bench, her breathing
shallow and ragged, her green eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Dr. Anton Castiglione’s sudden interruption had stopped the lethal dose, but
five years of medical coma and the physical shock of the evacuation were taking
a catastrophic toll on her weakened cardiovascular system.
Her skin was turning a dangerous, translucent shade of gray.
Matteo dropped to his knees beside her bench, his broad hand cradling her cold
cheek.
“Camilla... stay with me,” Matteo pleaded, his voice breaking, tears streaming
freely down his battle-scarred face. “We’re ten minutes from the private
airfield. The medical jet is waiting. We’re going to our villa in St. Moritz.”
Camilla smiled—a soft, heartbreaking, peaceful smile that carried no fear.
“Matteo... my lion...” she murmured, her hand reaching up to touch the silver
May you like
scar along his temple. “Do not cry. God gave me five more minutes to look into
your eyes... and that is more than a dying woman deserves.”
